


5 times gordo is a good parent and 1 time he accepts it

by cloudtalking



Category: Green Creek Series - T.J. Klune
Genre: Father & Son bonding, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, also margo but a small bit, but here u go, fuck robert & curtis, i've never written this kinda fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 15:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14855348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: for z for the wolfsong discord exchange!! pls appreciate the father son relationship they have i cry everytiem.gordo just really wants what's best for ox.





	5 times gordo is a good parent and 1 time he accepts it

**Author's Note:**

> hi!!! i edited this myself so im sorry if it sucks. i hope u like it tho!! ur the greatest!!

I.

gordo livingstone lives a legacy of monsters, and a life of nightmares. his father, for one; the skeleton in his closet gaining blood and flesh and masquerading as the man who should have cared for him his whole life. his lover for another; exchanging his own body and blood for that of a beast, mouth like a chainsaw, tearing and cutting through obstacles like paper. and even himself; a creature of lies and broken promises even with the promises and debts written on his skin, threatening to consume him.

nightmares are his neighbors, and frighteningly close ones. they lean up against the walls of his home, scent left hanging in the air across the town, crying out for attention.

one such neighbor: curtis matheson; bigger than his body and his bones and most importantly his son, who cowers underneath him.

gordo only sees it himself only a few times, when his son brings over his father’s forgotten lunch bag on his way to school. the boy is big and bright and beautiful, every part of him sincere and honest. it might be that gordo has never seen a dream before, perfect and unreal in its sheer goodness, but he’s immediately enamoured. 

“did you bring that for your pops?” chris asks, bending down low, palms pressed against his knees.

the matheson kid nods, hugging the lunchbox.

“get back to work chris,” gordo orders, stepping in. he turns to the tiny messenger, “i’ll take you to your dad— what’s your name, kid?”

“ox,” he says, not looking him in the eyes. gordo knows the feeling; far too many strange adults crowding far too close for comfort. 

he leads ox further into the workshop, carving a path through the loud and perilous machinery operated by loud and perilous men. ox grabs the sleeve of his coveralls and gordo makes a point not to notice, loosening his arm to better ox’s hold but never looking down.

matheson works the large and heavy machines out back, because he’s a large and heavy man with a personality much to large and heavy for the other shop boys to want to deal with. curtis seems fine with this arrangement; he doesn’t like the others much either.

gordo lifts his free arm up, waving it in the air,“matheson!” 

matheson raises a hand off of his work to let gordo know he sees him, turning off the miniature crane he uses to move heavy loads of scrap metal and taking his mufflers off before walking over. 

ox doesn’t seem to want to go farther than a few feet away from the door. gordo figures it’s because the area behind the garage screams danger to anyone not well-versed in the language of machines, and not because curtis matheson is walking up to them, tossing off grease-stained gloves onto an already cluttered workbench.

“hey, son,” matheson says, “what’ve you brought me?”

“potato salad,” ox says, peeking into the bag. “and corn chips, and a soda.”

matheson nods, doesn’t say thank you, and takes the bag when ox hands it to him. “get to class.”

“yes, sir,” ox says, dipping his head and then scrambling to do just that. gordo barely has time to turn his head before the boy is already speeding back through workshop, and at that point he’s still struck.

it isn’t explicit, isn’t cut and dry, isn’t carved in stone or screamed from the heavens, but it is something.

he never called robert his father either.

 

II.

maggie matheson is every bit the woman gordo expects her to be, if a bit less bruised.

here’s the thing about ideas: they fester. every time curtis mentions his family, however infrequently, it waters the seed already planted in gordo’s mind.

in all likelihood, this is insanity. gordo is a man made for tragedy and prone to projecting. not every distant father is a neglective one, not every stern word hints to violence. just because he never got over the teachings of his childhood, doesn’t mean everyone was taught the same.

he knows it might be worse that he’s thinking it at all; if he sees it everywhere, he might make the mistake of normalizing it. not every father is heavy handed, not every parent lets their child starve. gordo’s suffering is not because he was weak, but because no child should ever have to go through what he had.

that’s what he tells himself, anyway. especially the days that the matheson kid comes to visit.

however unhealthy he reasons it to be, he sees himself in ox matheson; the way the boy walks like he’s something smaller than himself, the way that he never bothers to defend himself from teasing, the way he flinches at raised voices. he’s not sure how much is ox and how much is just gordo himself, a sad scared child searching for someone to share his pain with.

then: curtis up and leaves, doesn’t show up for work, doesn’t pick up the phone when gordo calls home.

“that ass,” says rico. “bets on him being dead or in vegas?”

“vegas,” chris chimes, “dead’s too good to hope for.”

gordo rolls his eyes, but very nearly agrees. men like curtis don’t go missing— men like curtis are rarely ever missed at all.

after a few days, he takes a trip to the matheson household. the place itself isn’t quite that big, isn’t quite that pristine, isn’t quite anything in extreme. even the paint on the house is faded, yellow grass staining the lawn. one of the porch lights needs to be replaced, plunging everything into further mediocrity. it’s such a nothing house that in green creek it is almost hard to find; everything in the town being about half of what it could be. 

gordo knocks on the door. margaret matheson opens it. they stare at each other for a few seconds. 

gordo hasn’t met her before, only in stories from curtis, and very sparingly. he knows that she can cook, that she can clean, that she wants to get a job and curtis disagrees, that she’s not very supportive of his drinking habits, and that she’s the one who gives ox curtis’s lunches.

most of what he knows is from her husband’s complaints, and that isn’t exactly a very reliable source. 

what he knows from looking at her: she’s tired, the bags under her eyes more like battle scars. she’s dressed in faded jeans and a sweatshirt, not expecting company and a casual person at best. her eyes are soft for all that they’re exhausted, not steely like gordo’s own mother’s used to be. he’s not sure whether that’s a good sign or not.

“you’re mr. livingstone, right?” she asks. “i’m maggie, curtis’s wife.”

“you can call me gordo, mr. livingstone was my father.”

maggie nods. “is this about curtis’s absence from work? i thought he would have told you.”

gordo shakes his head. “he never bothered.”

he sees maggie silently curse herself, fixing her eyes from angry to pleasant to just exhausted again. being married to curtis matheson is sunning her ragged, it seems.

“I’m sorry,” maggie sighs. “he said that he would, and i know you called, but no one was home, and curtis doesn’t like me talking to his work friends.”

“friends is an interesting choice of words to use for people who he didn’t tell about his absence,” gordo said. “even employer is generous. he’s supposed to let me know when he wants to use his vacation days.”

suddenly, maggie looks nervous, and it occurs to gordo that maybe he shouldn’t insinuate he is firing curtis around the people for whom curtis is the only source of income. it also occurs to him that under no circumstance is he firing curtis if it means ox and maggie will suffer.

“this is the first offense,” gordo assures her. “it’s fine so long as it doesn’t repeat.” it isn’t, he would have fired anyone half as much of an asshole for half as ridiculous an offense, but maggie’s entire body relaxes and her face gains back its color.

“thank you,” she breathes. “he just forgot, i’m sorry.”

“‘s’not like it’s your fault your husband is a forgetful ass.”

she smiles carefully, not quite over the fear of losing her family’s only means of survival, but getting there.

“gordo?” a voice asks from deeper inside. “mom, is that—“

“it is,” maggie calls back, facing behind her. ‘he’s probably busy though, ox, we shouldn’t—“

“it’s fine.” he sends her a small smile, hoping it’s reassuring and not terrifying. he only ever smiles at mark and ox, and neither of them ever comment on it.

ox comes rushing up, maneuvering past his mother’s legs to beam at him. “hi, gordo.”

“hi, ox,” gordo says, and his small smile becomes slightly larger.

maggie joins them in their smile-fest, but hers is a bit more knowing. “do you want to stay for dinner?”

“yeah,” gordo says, mostly subconsciously, and he is invited back every day until curtis returns from his trip to nowhere.

next time, curtis doesn’t come back.

 

III. 

“you know, you don’t have to adopt him,” mark says. gordo knows mark can smell ox on him, see how happy he is everyday, hear him talk about things ox has done as if he’s his own son.

“i want to,” gordo, the person who rarely ever wants anything, replies. mark shuts up quick, returning to his task of finger combing every knot from out of gordo’s hair and then some.

 

IV. 

curtis leaves, and gordo steps up.

he opens up an account for ox’s student loans, he pays off their debts and the bills from the bank, he invites ox to work at the shop, he sets maggie up with an interview at a local diner. he even considers asking thomas and elizabeth for parenting tips, though he thinks better of it.

“they’d never let you be free,” mark remarks— and isn’t that funny, mark remarks. like he redoes himself like gordo is redoing himself to be half the parent ox deserves.

“no, but they at least seem to know a little bit of what they’re doing,” gordo curses, reclining back into the pillows pressed against his headboard, lying next to mark. “i’m doomed.”

“you’re going to be fine,” mark assures him, but gordo shakes his head.

“you know what maggie told me yesterday? she said she was changing her name back to callaway.”

mark’s eyes widen. “that’s great! is ox changing his too?”

gordo shakes his head again. “she said she asked, and ox said no. you wanna know why?” he doesn’t wait for mark to answer. “because he wants to make matheson a good name.”

“oh, shit.”

“yeah,” gordo sighs. “how the fuck am i supposed to be a role model for that? i can’t, that’s how. not when robert livingstone was mine.”

“stop,” mark orders, and gordo does. he’s heard thomas use his alpha voice a few times, commanding the attention and the loyalty of everyone in the room. this is a bit like that, and gordo can’t go against him in this. 

mark moves to face gordo, sitting up on the bed. “you are not that man. that man is not your father. you were a kid when he did what he did, and you were raised alongside the rest of us. nothing about you could ever be like robert livingstone, and don’t you dare put yourself down like that again. you’re too good for that. i love you.”

gordo kisses mark to shut him up and hopes that he knows that he returns the sentiment, even if gordo is rarely ever able to say it out loud. 

 

V.

“what is this?” gordo asks, and it might be the wrong thing to ask, because ox’s face goes red. 

“uh, they wanted us to make father’s day gifts in school a while ago, ‘cause it’s today, i mean, and i have no one else to give it to, so yeah.” ox rubs the back of his neck, and shrugs. “it’s supposed to be a mug.”

it looks a little more like a bucket with a donut attached to it, but gordo has never been good at ceramics either. 

the so-called mug is blue, light in some parts and dark in others in a way that is obviously not on purpose. in sharpie, ox has written gordo’s mug, but his handwriting is so dreadful it looks like a piece of art in itself. gordo tries not to tear up.

“thanks, bud,” gordo sniffs. 

“thanks for being here for me to give this to you,” ox says, and promptly turns red once more-- though his skin is dark enough that it should be easier to hide. he makes a hasty retreat, closing the door to gordo’s office on his way out.

gordo doesn’t blame ox one bit for his lack of ability to deal with emotion. it was him that raised the boy after all.

he uses that mug every damn day of his coffee-drinking life.

 

+I.

“you did a good job with him,” mark says. he might have some gray hairs against the blonde now, but gordo hasn’t been close enough to check in years.

“who?” 

“ox,” mark says, nodding towards the kitchen where said alpha is helping with the dinner elizabeth is cooking up. “he’s wonderful.”

“he was wonderful before me,” gordo says, no modesty in his voice. “maggie was a great woman and a great mother, even i couldn’t fuck that up.”

the past tense hurts, clawing at gordo’s heart every time he has to use it. they’ve lost too much in recent years not to feel an ache when the wound is prodded, but also too much to avoid prodding it at all. 

“it was a joint effort, i’m sure,” mark says, grinning. “c’mon, tell me about it. i know you have stories.”

gordo doesn’t just have stories, he has scrapbooks. he has every father’s day craft and present from the time ox turned twelve. he has home video tapes maggie burned copies of so he could watch memories of ox at all his birthday parties and all of his defining moments. he has ox’s first tool kit and his first tooth fairy dollar and his first Christmas gift to him and his first perfect grade on a test, and he doesn’t shut up about any of it until ox forcibly shoves cucumber salad in his mouth to ensure his silence. 

not once does he think robert livingstone corrupted his parenting, not when every one of those stories make him feel a smile shaping his mouth.

if this is what being a father is— caring about someone and their personal growth so much for years and feeling a wave of pride whenever you talk about them— then gordo livingstone is the proudest fucking father around, and he won’t let any of them forget it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!!


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